Backcasting in futures studies: a synthesized scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development

Transcription

1 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 European Journal of Futures Research ORIGINAL ARTICLE Backcasting in futures studies: a synthesized scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development Simon Elias Bibri Open Access Abstract Backcasting as a scholarly and planning approach is increasingly used in futures studies in fields related to urban sustainability as an alternative to traditional planning approaches and a formal element of future strategic initiatives. It is viewed as a natural step in operationalizing sustainable development within different societal spheres. As a holistic urban development strategy, smart sustainable cities represent a manifestation of sustainable development as a process of change and a strategic approach to achieving the long-term goals of sustainability. Achieving smart sustainable cities represents an instance of urban sustainability, a concept that refers to a desired state in which a city strives to retain the balance of socio-ecological system through sustainable development as a desired trajectory. This long-term goal requires fostering linkages between scientific and social research, technological innovations, institutional practices, and policy design and planning in relevance to urban sustainability. It also requires a long-term vision, a transdisciplinary approach, and a system-oriented perspective on addressing environmental, economic, and social issues. These requirements are at the core of backcasting as an approach to futures studies. Backcasting is a special kind of scenario methodology to develop future models for smart sustainable city as a planning tool for urban sustainability. Goal-oriented backcasting approaches declare long-range targets that lie quite far in the future. Visionary images of a long-term future can stimulate an accelerated movement towards achieving the goals of urban sustainability. The backcasting approach is found to be well-suited for long-term urban sustainability solutions due to its normative, goal-oriented, and problem-solving character. Also, it is particularly useful when dealing with complex problems and transitions, the current trends are part of the problem, and different directions of development can be allowed given the wide scope and long time horizon considered. A number of recent futures studies using backcasting have underlined the efficacy of this scholarly and planning approach in terms of indicating policy pathway for sustainability transitions and thus supporting policymakers and facilitating and guiding their actions. However, as there are a number of backcasting approaches used in different domains, and the backcasting framework is adaptive and contextual in nature, it is deemed highly relevant and useful to devise a scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development. This paper has a fourfold purpose. It aims (1) to provide a comparative account of the most commonly applied approaches in futures studies dealing with technology and sustainability (forecasting and backcasting); (2) to review the existing backcasting methodologies and discuss the relevance of their use in terms of their steps and guiding questions in analyzing strategic smart sustainable city development as an area that is at the intersection of city (Continued on next page) Correspondence: simoe@ntnu.no Department of Computer and Information Science, Department of Urban Planning and Design, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Sem Saelands veie 9, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway The Author(s) Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

2 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 2 of 27 (Continued from previous page) development, sustainable development, and technology development; (3) to synthesize a backcasting approach based on the outcome of the review and discussion; and (4) to examine backcasting as a scholarly methodology and planning approach by looking at its use in the Gothenburg 2050 Project, as well as to use this case to illustrate the core of the synthesized approach. The synthesized scholarly and planning approach serves to help researchers and scholars in analyzing strategic smart sustainable city development to assist planners, policymakers, and decision-makers in their endeavor to implement smart sustainable cities. Keywords: Smart sustainable cities, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Backcasting, Forecasting, Futures studies, Strategic planning, Strategic smart sustainable city development, Scholarly and planning approach, Introduction The central role of cities in sustainable development is clearly reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) of the United Nations [75] 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is about making cities resilient and sustainable (SDG Goal 11). The defining role of cities in sustainable local and global development is well documented [28, 75]. As the engines of economic growth, cities are the world s major consumers of energy resources and significant contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They consume 67% of the global energy demand and generate up to 70% of the harmful GHG emissions (e.g., [26]). Accordingly, they have increasingly gained a central position in applying the discourse of sustainable development and ecological modernization. They are seen as the most important arena for sustainability transitions because they constitute key sites of economic, environmental, and social dynamism and innovation making significant contributions to sustainable transformations and thus social change and cultural advancement. As such, they offer ideal testing grounds for new solutions spanning diverse sectors. As they are essential places where new ideas are created, tested, and advanced, many sustainable urban development frameworks and approaches reference the role of ICT in advancing the goals of sustainable development (e.g., [3 5, 12, 13, 70]). For example, the UN s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sees ICT as a means to promote economic development and protect the environment, increase resource efficiency, achieve human progress and knowledge in societies, upgrade legacy infrastructure, and retrofit industries based on sustainable design principles [74, 75]. The tremendous and multifaceted potential of the smart city approach has been under investigation by the United Nations [73] through their study on Big Data and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In light of the above, recent research endeavors have recently started to focus on amalgamating sustainable cities and smart cities as urban development strategies in an attempt to achieve the required level of sustainability with respect to urban operations, functions, services, designs, and policies under what is labeled smart sustainable cities of the future [12]. Especially, smart cities have been criticized for their lack of explicitly incorporating the goals of sustainable development (e.g., [12, 34, 43]) and sustainable cities for facing difficulties in translating sustainability into the built environment and for evaluating the extent to which different sustainable urban forms contribute to the goals of sustainable development ([16, 31, 37, 40, 78]). Adding to these is the weak or lack of connection between the two urban development strategies, despite the proven role of ICT in supporting cities in their transition towards the needed sustainable development (e.g., [1, 19, 43]). On this note, Angelidou et al. [5] conclude that the smart city and sustainable city landscapes are extremely fragmented both on the policy and the technical levels, and there is a host of unexplored opportunities towards smart sustainable city development. The basic idea of smart sustainable cities of the future is that this holistic urban development approach seeks to explicitly bring together sustainable cities and smart cities as urban endeavors in ways that address and overcome the key shortcomings of both classes of cities in terms of their contribution to the goals of sustainable development. This can be accomplished by merging and leveraging what each class has to offer for sustainability in terms of pervasive computing and advanced ICT enabling smart cities and design concepts and planning principles guiding sustainable urban forms, with the sheer purpose of advancing sustainability in an increasingly technologized, computerized, and urbanized world [12]. Smart sustainable cities represent a manifestation of sustainable urban development as a process of change and a strategic approach to achieving the long-term goals of sustainability. Accordingly, such strategy is intended to achieve the required level of sustainability as to operational functioning, planning, and governance with the support of ICT of pervasive computing as a set of advanced technologies and their novel applications pertaining to big data analytics, context-aware computing, and other recent computing waves. Achieving the state of smart sustainable cities represents an instance of

3 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 3 of 27 urban sustainability, a concept that refers to a desired (normative) state in which a city strives to retain a balance of socio-ecological systems through the strategic process of sustainable development as a desired trajectory. Urban sustainability is cast in terms of four dimensions: physical, environment, social, and economic, which should all be enhanced over the long run given their interdependence, synergy, and equal importance. To achieve this long-term goal requires a planning framework for strategic smart sustainable city development that facilitates and contributes to the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and improvement of urban systems, including practical interventions for coordinating, integrating, and coupling urban domains, using cutting-edge technologies. This strategic endeavor should focus on replenishing resources, lowering energy use, and lessening pollution and waste levels while improving social justice, equity, stability, and safety. Accordingly, it can best be pursued through backcasting as a strategic planning approach due to its appropriateness for addressing sustainability issues (see, e.g., [22, 27, 36, 51]). In addition, the problems that both smart cities and sustainable cities face today will increase in the future with much greater compounding affects. Consequently, policy actions for developing smart sustainable cities of the future ought to be applied, tested, transformed, disseminated, and adapted to help solve those problems. Smart sustainable cities require long-term strategic planning to overcome their particular challenges. An appropriate response to smart sustainable city development involves the analysis of several factors, including past, present, and future situations; long-term visions; formulation, implementation, and follow-up; transfer and deployment of technologies; building and enhancement of human and social capacity; and regulatory policies. These factors are intertwined and thus cannot be isolated from each other in all kinds of urban sustainability endeavors, which indeed require a system-oriented perspective to addressing environmental, economic, and social issues. Futures studies offer promising approaches to building smart sustainable city foresight, especially in the situation where the problem is complex and major change is needed. Backcasting as a scholarly methodology is well suited to any multifaceted kind of planning process (see [51]). Envisioning smart sustainable cities as future human settlements has an obvious normative side: what futures are desired? Backcasting the preferred vision of the future has an analytical side: how can we attain this desirable future? Backcasting is a process of starting from a desirable (sustainable) future as a vision of success, then looking back to today to identify the most strategic steps or actions necessary for achieving that specified future. Indeed, backcasting as a scholarly and planning approach is increasingly used in futures studies in fields related to urban sustainability as a formal element of future strategic initiatives and endeavors. It is viewed as a natural step in operationalizing sustainable urban development. This paper has a fourfold purpose. It aims (1) to provide a short comparative account of the most commonly applied approaches in futures studies dealing with technology and sustainability (forecasting and backcasting), with the main focus on and the primary intent of highlighting the relevance of backcasting approach to sustainability planning as a set of complex problems; (2) to review the existing backcasting methodologies and discuss the relevance of their use in terms of their steps and guiding questions in analyzing strategic smart sustainable city development as an area that is at the intersection of city development, sustainable development, and technology development; (3) to synthesize a backcasting approach based on the outcome of the review and discussion; and (4) to examine backcasting as a scholarly methodology and planning approach by looking at its use in the Gothenburg 2050 Project, as well as to use this case to illustrate the core of the synthesized approach. The motivation for this paper is to provide guidelines and tools for the development of smart sustainable cities of the future. This paper is organized as follows: the Conceptual and theoretical background section introduces, describes, and discusses the relevant conceptual and theoretical constructs that make up this study. The Futures studies: dimensions, objectives, types, and approaches section provides an account of futures studies, covering dimensions, aims, types, and approaches, with a focus on sustainability issues. The Backcasting approach to strategic planning section reviews the existing backcasting methodologies and discusses the relevance of their use in terms of their steps and guiding questions in analyzing strategic smart sustainable city development as a scholarly area that integrates city development, sustainable development, and technology development. The A synthesized scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development section synthesizes a backcasting framework as a scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development based on the outcome of the review and discussion. Backcasting is examined, in the Case study: the Project Gothenburg 2050 section, by looking at its use in the Gothenburg 2050 Project. A discussion of backcasting as a useful tool for achieving urban sustainability is the object of the Backcasting as a useful tool for achieving urban sustainability: the shaping role of political action in sustainability transitions section. The paper ends, in the Conclusions section, with concluding remarks and some reflections.

4 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 4 of 27 Conceptual and theoretical background Smart sustainable cities The concept of smart sustainable cities has emerged as a result of three important global trends at play across the world, namely the diffusion of sustainability, the spread of urbanization, and the rise of ICT [12]. As echoed by Höjer and Wangel [34], the interlinked development of sustainability, urbanization, and ICT has recently converged under what is labeled smart sustainable cities. Accordingly, smart sustainable cities represent a new techno-urban phenomenon that emerged around the mid-2010s (e.g., [12, 15]). The basic idea is to leverage the potential and ubiquity of advanced ICT in the transition towards the needed sustainable development in an increasingly computerized and urbanized world. Therefore, the development of smart sustainable cities is gaining increasing attention worldwide from research institutes, universities, governments, policymakers, and ICT companies as a promising response to the imminent challenges of sustainability and urbanization. As an amalgam of urban and technological innovations, smart sustainable cities are rapidly gaining momentum as a holistic urban development approach and thus becoming an academic pursuit and evolving into a realist enterprise across the world, not least in ecologically and technologically advanced nations [14]. The term smart sustainable city, although not always explicitly discussed, is used to describe a city that is supported by the pervasive presence and massive use of advanced ICT, which, in connection with various urban systems and domains and how these intricately interrelate and are coordinated respectively, enables the city to control available resources safely, sustainably, and efficiently to improve economic and societal outcomes. The combination of smart cities and sustainable cities, of which many definitions are available, has been less explored as well as conceptually difficult to delineate due to the multiplicity and diversity of the existing definitions (see [15] for an overview). ITU (2014) provides a comprehensive definition based on analyzing around 120 definitions, a smart sustainable city is an innovative city that uses ICTs and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects. Another definition put forth by [34] (p. 10), which is deductively crafted and based on the concept of sustainable development, states that a smart sustainable city is a city that meets the needs of its present inhabitants without compromising the ability for other people or future generations to meet their needs, and thus, does not exceed local or planetary environmental limitations, and where this is supported by ICT. This entails unlocking and exploiting the potential of ICT of pervasive computing as an enabling, integrative, and constitutive technology for achieving the environmental, social, and economic goals of sustainability due to the underlying transformational, substantive, and disruptive effects [15, 16]. Another conceptualization of the term provided by [14] (p. 11) states: as a dynamic, complex interplay between scientific innovation, technological innovation, environmental innovation, urban design and planning innovation, institutional innovation, and policy innovation, smart sustainable cities represent and involve inherently complex socio-technical systems of all sorts of innovation systems. Such systems, which focus on the creation, diffusion, and utilization of knowledge and technology, are of various types (variants of innovation models), including national, regional, sectoral, technological, and Triple Helix of university industry government relations. As ICT permeates infrastructures, architectural and urban designs, ecosystem services, human services, and citizens objects, we can speak of cities getting smarter as to addressing environmental, social, and economic problems, as well as providing services to citizens to improve the quality of their life [9, 12, 14, 15]. Indeed, this pervasion of ICT into urban environments implies new and more extensive sources of urban data, which can provide immense possibilities to better monitor, understand, analyze, and plan smart sustainable cities to improve their contribution to the goals of sustainable development [12]. The increasing convergence of ICT of various forms of pervasive computing is increasingly seen as a way to capture further and invigorate the application demand for the many solutions for urban sustainability that emerging and future ICT can offer. The ability of computerizing urban systems and domains and hence thinking data analytically and based on context information about how to enhance their contribution to the different dimensions of sustainability constitutes an indication of the reach of the gravitational field of ICT of pervasive computing s effort to develop innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches from the ground up for smart sustainable cities of the future [14]. Therefore, the potential of monitoring, understanding, analyzing, and planning cities through advanced ICT can well be leveraged in advancing sustainability [14, 15]. Indeed, smart cities (e.g., [3, 9]) and sustainable cities (e.g., [12, 16]) that are engaging on the new transition in ICT are getting smarter in achieving the required level of sustainability. As complex systems par excellence, smart sustainable cities rely more and more on sophisticated technologies and their novel applications to realize their full potential and thus respond to the challenge of sustainability. The most prevalent of these technologies and their applications, which are prerequisite for realizing ICT of pervasive computing, are UbiComp, AmI, the

5 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 5 of 27 IoT, and SenComp and related big data analytics and context-aware computing in relation to sustainable urban development [12]. Big data analytics and context-aware computing as rapidly growing areas of ICT are becoming of crucial importance to the operational functioning and planning of smart sustainable cities [12]. Therefore, the expansion of these computing waves is increasingly stimulating the development of different models of the smart sustainable city as urban initiatives and projects. Strategic smart sustainable urban planning Institutionalized in many industrialized nations since the late nineteenth century, urban planning (also referred to as city planning and urban development) is a governmental function in most countries worldwide. It is practiced on the neighborhood, district, city, metropolitan, regional, and national scales with land use, environmental, transport, local, metropolitan, and regional planning representing more specialized foci. Accordingly, urban planning is a political and technical process concerned with the development and use of land, the protection and use of the environment, the design of the urban environment, and public administration and welfare. Several notable books (e.g., [38, 45, 46, 48, 77]) have been written on the subject of urban planning (and development). They have approached it from a variety of perspectives, often combined, including physical, spatial, social, cultural, political, economic, and ecological. Urban planning is the process of guiding and directing the use and development of land, urban environment, and natural environment, as well as ecosystem and human services in ways that ensure effective utilization of natural resources, intelligent management of infrastructures and facilities, efficient operations and services, optimal economic development, and high quality of life and well-being. In more detail, urban planning involves drawing up, designing, evaluating, and forecasting an organized, coordinated, and standardized physical arrangement and infrastructural system of a city and the associated processes, functions, and services, i.e., built form (buildings, streets, residential and commercial areas, facilities, parks, etc.), urban infrastructure (transportation, water supply, communication systems, distribution networks, etc.), ecosystem services (energy, raw material, air, food, etc.), human services (public services, social services, cultural facilities, etc.), and administration and governance (implementation of mechanisms for adherence to established regulatory frameworks, practice enhancements, policy recommendations, technical and assessment studies, etc.). The ultimate aim of urban planning is to make cities more sustainable and thus livable, safe, resilient, and attractive places. As an academic discipline, urban planning is concerned with strategic thinking, research and analysis, sustainable development, economic development, environmental planning, transportation planning, land-use planning, landscape architecture, civil engineering, policy recommendations, public administration, and urban design (e.g., [49]). Urban planning is closely related to the field of urban design, and some urban planners indeed provide designs for neighborhoods, streets, buildings, parks, and other urban areas. The research and practice in the field of smart sustainable cities tend to focus on the identification of the urban domains that are associated with sustainability dimensions (including transport, energy, environment, land use, mobility, traffic, healthcare, education, public safety) on the basis of big data for storage, processing, analysis, modeling, and simulation so to develop urban intelligence functions and simulation models for strategic decision-making and enhanced insights pertaining to urban planning processes [12, 13]. This also involves how those domains interrelate and can be coordinated and merged together for enhanced outcomes in terms of the contribution to the goals of sustainable development. The technical features of smart sustainable urban planning involve the application of ICT as a set of scientific and technical processes to land use, natural ecosystems, physical structures, spatial organizations, natural resources, infrastructure systems, socio-economic networks, and citizens services. Recent evidence (e.g., [3, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16]) lends itself to the argument that an amalgamation of these strands of urban planning with cutting-edge big data analytics as an advanced form of ICT can help create more sustainable and thus livable, safe, and attractive cities. In all, the data-driven approach to urban planning is of paramount importance to strategic sustainable urban development. Besides, the functioning, management, and organization of urban systems and related processes and activities in the field of sustainable urban planning require not only complex interdisciplinary knowledge of sustainability but also sophisticated technologies and powerful data analytics capabilities. Sustainable development goals and smart targets should be well understood with respect to their synergy and integration (see, e.g., [1, 5, 9, 12, 13, 16, 19, 43]) in the context of city planning, a valuable force for attaining a sort of integrated objectives in the realm of smart sustainable cities. As a management and government function, city planning involves formulating a detailed plan to achieve optimum balance of demands for growth with the available resources and the need to protect the environment, or to provide and maintain a livable and healthy human environment in conjunction with minimal demand on resources and minimal impacts on the environment by integrating urban strategies with technological innovations as well as formulating and

6 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 6 of 27 implementing policy regulations and institutional frameworks. In this respect, backcasting appears to be the most appropriate planning approach into smart sustainable city development due to the complexity of the problem at hand, and the fact that different directions of development can be allowed given the wide scope and long time horizon considered. Smart sustainable urban planning uses ICT and other means to guide and direct the use and development of land, resources, and infrastructures; the protection of the environment; and the distribution of ecosystem and human services in ways that strategically assess and continuously improve the contribution of the city to the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainable development. Thus, it involves a set of approaches into practically applying and effectively merging sustainability knowledge and eco-technology to the planning and development of existing and new cities. This entails working strategically towards maximizing the efficiency of energy and material resources, creating zero-waste systems, supporting renewable energy production and consumption, promoting carbon neutrality and reducing pollution, decreasing transport needs and encouraging walking and cycling, providing efficient and sustainable transport, preserving ecosystems, emphasizing design scalability and spatial proximity, and promoting livability and sustainable community [12, 13]. ICT is of fundamental importance to attaining such goals due to its constitutive nature and transformational effects. What is known about the relationship between urban planning interventions, sustainability, and ICT objectives is a subject of philosophical debate. This means that realizing smart sustainable cities requires making countless and integrated decisions about urban form, urban design, sustainable technologies, and governance. Regardless, this endeavor should consist in adopting a holistic approach to decision-making, a pathway that can best be pursued by employing advanced technological systems and analytical methods, thereby the need for big data technologies and related data-driven decision-making with respect to urban policy design and analysis. As noted by Angelidou et al. [5], the incorporation of the systematic use of big data in the policy development and monitoring process is a key success factor towards better policy design and implementation, with significant positive impacts on contemporary cities on multiple levels. To put it differently, new sources of urban data coordinated with urban practice and policy can be applied on the basis of the fundamental principles of data science and analytical engineering to devise powerful solutions to urban sustainability problems. Big data analytics for decision-making (basing the decisions on the analysis of big data) can be of wide use in different areas of urban planning. Indeed, big data uses are associated with optimization, control, automation, management, evaluation, recommendation, and improvement in relation to urban operational functioning, development, and governance in the context of sustainability [12]. This should constitute an integral part of the detailed plan to be formulated based on backcasting for smart sustainable city development, where consideration is typically given to a wide array of sustainability issues, such as air pollution, traffic congestion, land use, energy consumption, legislation and regulation, and social policy. Smart sustainable urban planning is gaining special importance in, and its prominence is increasing throughout, the twenty-first century, as contemporary cities are increasingly facing enormous challenges pertaining to urbanization and sustainability. As a process, it identifies the goals of sustainable development to be achieved, formulates strategies to achieve them, arranges the means and procedures required, and implements, monitors, directs, assesses, and enhances all steps in their proper sequence. This is at the core of the backcasting approach to strategic planning for the development of smart sustainable cities of the future. Strategic smart sustainable urban development Sustainable urban development is an approach to achieve urban sustainability. There are several approaches to sustainable urban development, one of which is the strategic one which is guided by a shared understanding of sustainability principles that embody the end goal for achieving urban sustainability. The four sustainability principles are considered as basic principles for socio-ecological sustainability as developed through scientific consensus (e.g., [36]). In the sustainable society, according to Holmberg and Robèrt [36], nature is not subject to systematically increasing: 1. Concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth s crust, 2. Concentrations of substances produced by society, 3. Degradation by physical means, and in that society 4. People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their ability to meet their needs. The purpose of articulating sustainability with scientific rigor is to make it more intelligible, more useful, and clearer for measuring, analyzing, and managing human activities within the society. From an environmental perspective, for example, to be strategic in moving towards urban sustainability requires a clear understanding of sustainability principles concerned with environmental issues, which are employed to set the minimum requirements of an environmentally sustainable city.

7 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 7 of 27 Sustainability principles define an end goal for urban sustainability to plan strategically and holistically to attain socio-ecological sustainability in the city. Strategic sustainable urban development is a planned development that addresses environmental, social, and economic issues in a rigorous, meaningful, and scientific way to achieve a sustainable city. This can occur through tackling the root causes that are resulting in the current systematic decline in the potential of the city so as to help develop upstream and well-informed solutions needed to sustain the functioning of urban systems. Strategic sustainable urban development entails a backcasting from basic sustainability principles, whereby a desirable sustainable future is set as the reference point for devising and implementing strategic actions to attain that specified future, the actions needed to achieve the long-term goals of urban sustainability, and all of the other critical elements developed during the backcasting exercise. This is necessary to act proactively as well as to think strategically, on a larger scale and of future generations. Strategic sustainable urban development can be viewed as an alternative way of thinking to solve the escalating environmental problems and socio-economic issues, thereby mitigating the negative impacts of the current path of city development. As such, it seeks to guide planners, organizations, governments, and institutions to agree upon concrete ways to take action together to implement sustainable urban development on a global scale. The concept of sustainable development has been applied to urban planning since the early 1990s (e.g., [77]). The strategic process of sustainable urban development as a desired trajectory seeks to create healthy, livable, and prosperous human environments with minimal demand on resources (energy, material, etc.) and minimal impact on the environment (toxic waste, air and water pollution, hazardous chemicals, etc.). Richardson [59] (p.14) defines sustainable urban development as a process of change in the built environment which foster economic development while conserving resources and promoting the health of the individual, the community, and the ecosystem. In a nutshell, sustainable urban development is characterized as achieving a balance between the development of and equity in the urban areas and the protection of the urban environment. However, conflicts among the goals of sustainable urban development to achieve the long-term goals of urban sustainability are challenging to deal with and daunting to overcome. This has indeed been, and continues to be, one of the toughest challenges facing urban planners and scholars as to planning in the realm of sustainable cities. Despite sustainable urban development seeking to provide an enticing, holistic approach into evading the conflicts among its goals, these conflicts cannot be shaken off so easily, as they go to the historic core of planning and are a leitmotif in the contemporary battles in our cities, rather than being merely conceptual, among the abstract notions of ecological, economic, and political logic ([21], p. 296). Even though these goals co-exist uneasily in contemporary cities, sustainable urban development as a long-range objective for achieving the aim of urban sustainability is worthy for urban planners, as they need a strategic process to achieve the status of sustainable cities, to increase the contribution of smart cities to sustainability, and to spur the development of smart sustainable cities. As expressed by [21] (p. 9), planners will in the upcoming years confront deep-seated conflicts among economic, social, and environmental interests that cannot be wished away through admittedly appealing images of a community in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, one can diffuse the conflict and find ways to avert its more destructive fallout. To put it differently, sustainable urban development advocates can and ought to seek ways to make the most of all three value sets at once. This is in contrast to keeping on playing them off against one another. With that in mind, the synergistic and substantive effects of sustainable development on forms of urban management, planning, and development require cooperative effort, collaborative work, and concerted action from diverse urban stakeholders in order to take a holistic view of the complex challenges and pressing issues facing contemporary cities. In the context of this paper, the smart dimension of sustainable urban development is also in focus. In this regard, the strategic process of smart sustainable urban development denotes a process of change in the built environment driven by ICT and other technological innovations that seek to promote sustainable built form, environmental integration, economic regeneration, and social equity as a set of interrelated goals. In other words, to foster economic development while conserving resources and promoting the health of the ecosystem and its users requires innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches resulting from unlocking the untapped potential and transformational effects of ICT in terms of its disruptive and synergetic power given its enabling, integrative, and constitutive nature. Such process ought to be based on amalgamating the research agenda of urban computing innovation and urban ICT development with the agenda of sustainable development and urban planning, thereby justifying ICT investment and its orientation by environmental concerns and socio-economic needs within contemporary human settlements. This endeavor should in turn be supported by pertinent institutional structures and practices and policy frameworks and measures.

8 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 8 of 27 Futures studies: dimensions, objectives, types, and approaches Since the dawn of civilization, people have tried to develop methods for predicting the future. But in recent years, scientists, sociologists, researchers, and other futurists within different disciplines have developed qualitative and quantitative methods for rationally predicting the future. Rationality in this context of use signifies a recognition or awareness that many different futures are possible and that the future is far from being determined or known with absolute certainty. This is typically contingent upon the kinds of the decisions people make and action they take in the present. This paper is concerned with a backcasting approach to futures studies on smart sustainable city development, and such studies do not pretend to be able to predict the future, although assessing the probabilities of alternative futures in this regard constitutes a key aspect of the approach to studying (smart sustainable cities of) the future. Futures studies are intended to assist decision-making under uncertainty which is to be defined as indeterminacy, rather than to predict the future [27]. The backcasting approach in this context is primarily designed to help people better understand future possibilities of models of smart sustainable urban form in order to make better decisions today. Indeed, the core purpose of futures studies is to get a better understanding of future opportunities as alternatives to their differences and feasibilities. These can be employed by the aligned stakeholders in a given endeavor to challenge present systems or to influence the future. Inspire it, or adapt to the most likely one. Creating a choice of futures by outlining alternatives usually form the basis for planning. In light of this, futures studies help people to examine and clarify their normative scenarios of the future, to transform their visions, and then to develop action plans on the basis of a wide range of techniques. In the context of smart sustainable city development, they are basically used to provide an analytical framework for policy decisions in the identification of opportunities for integrating the novel applications of advanced ICT with the design concepts and planning principles of sustainable urban forms and in assessing alternative actions of high strategic potential under different conditions. The role of futures studies has become of central importance for the policy-making process in the context of urban sustainability. Such a process is characterized by increasing complexity at the macro-level as well as by decreasing the extent of conditionality at the micro-level due to the mounting autonomy of individual actors [47]. This implies that social institutions are less powerful in affecting major changes through straightforward policy responses [44]. Long-lasting and substantive transformations, including sustainability transitions, can only come about through the accumulation of several integrated smaller-scale actions associated with strategically successful initiatives and programs. They also operate at the interface of policy domains. Methods for futures studies can help to highlight such initiatives and programs and to identify such interface. In the context of city development, they can be used to illustrate what might happen to the cities in order to allow them to adapt to perceived future trends. Researchers, scientists, sociologists, and other futurists employ methods for futures studies as an attempt to manage uncertainty rather than reduce it. As such, these methods aid in dealing with this uncertainty by clarifying what the most desirable possibilities are, what can be known, what is already known, and how today s decisions and actions may play out in each of a variety of plausible futures. The effectiveness of futures studies lies in defining a broader conceptual framework for discussing the future as well as for contributing to policy formulation, transition governance, and the emergence of new possibilities. The kind of decision-making such studies seek to assist under uncertainty pertains especially to long-term decisions. In the context of smart sustainable cities, decisions are to be made in ways that reduce uncertainty about what may happen in the future in terms of urban development or analyze the effects of today s decisions taken in line with the vision of sustainability as enabled by advanced ICT in the future. Futurists often divide the purpose of futures studies as assessing the probable, imagining the possible, and deciding on the preferable. As pointed out by Banister and Stead [7], futures studies can be classified based on the three modes of thinking about the future: Possible futures (what might happen?): Scenario studies as descriptions of possible future states and their developments are included in this category [20]. Probable futures (what is most likely to happen?): This category includes forecasting studies, which are characterized by a predictive nature and mainly focused on historical data and trend analysis. Preferable futures (what we would prefer to happen?): This category is of relevance to futures studies dealing with urban sustainability, as it involves studies focusing on normative or desirable futures, such as backcasting and normative forecasting. Several authors have elaborated on futures studies in relation to sustainability. Dreborg [27] identifies four different types of futures studies in connection with sustainability, namely: Directional studies which investigate different economics and other measures in the short term

9 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 9 of 27 that will probably work in the right direction towards sustainability. Short-term studies which take immediate official goals as a starting point or a small step towards sustainability and attempt to find means of achieving them. Forecasting studies which usually apply to a longterm perspective, but restricted presumptions of the possibilities of major change make this approach fail to reach sustainability. Alternative solutions and visions where the development of future (normative) scenarios as desirable futures allow them to be explored by using backcasting where the results describe a desirable future with criteria for sustainability providing the systemic framework for change. There is no consensus on a single classification of futures studies or a guide for the application of the most suitable approaches to futures studies. Most methods for futures studies focus on one or two of these goals: assessing the probable, imagining the possible, and deciding on the preferable (e.g., [47]). Futures studies on smart sustainable city development are concerned with deciding on the preferable in terms of how to prefer the development of such city to play out. In this regard, visioning techniques may provide information about the preferable as a result of visioning: the action of developing a preferred plan, goal, or vision for the future. They can also tell us about the possible as a result of brainstorming over a range of alternatives if we happen to focus on both the preferable and possible as goals. Further, beyond any kind of classification and focus, the researcher s worldview and aim are the most important criteria that determine how a futures study can be developed. Researchers will almost always need different methods to carry out their futures studies. Being the most suitable methodological framework or planning approach to be pursued in futures studies dealing with urban sustainability, the backcasting approach is prescriptive (normative) by focusing on what smart sustainable cities of the future should be. Generally, prescriptive methods for futures studies try to aid people in clarifying their values and preferences so they can develop visions of desirable futures. Indeed, backcasting allows researchers to understand what they would prefer the future to be and then take the appropriate (or necessary) steps to create that preferred future. Methods for futures studies are also descriptive (extrapolative) in the sense of describing what the future will be or could be in an objective way. While many futurists strive for objectivity, most methods for futures studies as part of qualitative inquiry rely on subjective human judgment. Nevertheless, various tools have been developed and applied to mitigate such judgment through encouraging collective judgment, generating ideas to produce different judgments, and identifying discrepancies between competing views on the future, as well as substantiating consistencies and inconsistencies among and within such views. There might be as many approaches to futures studies as futurists since futurists develop different ways to look ahead or envision the future. But some consensus in this regard is evolving. According to Chatterjee and Gordon [25], futures studies can be categorized on the basis of the context that is being studied in terms of simplicity and complexity. Specifically, if the context is predictable and largely controllable, then a planning approach such as forecasting may be appropriate, and if it is unpredictable and uncertain, an alternative approach such as scenario planning is more suitable [25]. Another consensual perspective among futurists is the need to employ multiple approaches to address most futures problems. In this paper, the intent is to devise or craft a backcasting as a planning method for smart sustainable city development, complemented by insights drawn from trend analysis and scenario planning. There is an argument that supports the idea of developing future research programs that integrate various approaches to futures studies to gain much greater insight than relying on a single approach. There are a number of different approaches to strategy analysis and future analysis that investigate what will, could, or should happen in the future that are in their application not mutually exclusive, including, but not limited to, cyclical pattern analysis, trend analysis, forecasting, visioning, and scenario planning, in addition to backcasting and forecasting. These are briefly presented below. Cyclical pattern analysis This futures study method is closely related to trend analysis. Many environmental, economic, and social phenomena seem to operate in cycles. It uses cyclic or recurring patterns in the form of waves, bursts, epochs, and episodes to anticipate future developments in various domains, such as city development, environmental change, public policy, and economic/financial system. Trend analysis A trend denotes a pattern of change over time in some phenomena of importance and relevance to the observer. As a common futures study method, trend analysis involves the use of a variety of techniques based on historical data. Quantitative trend analysis is often applied to areas involving solid and large historical data. Its key issue lies in the propensity to accept their results as a kind of truth about the future rather than simply a starting point for discussion [7]. Such analysis remains most

10 Bibri European Journal of Futures Research (2018) 6:13 Page 10 of 27 suitable for projecting forward in a stable or nonlinear system. Technological forecasting Forecasting is used to predict the most likely future, projected forward over a specific time horizon (e.g., coming weeks, months, or years) based on the previous or current trends. Technological forecasting has its own concepts, techniques, and practitioners, representing a distinct endeavor within futures studies. One of the subject areas where forecasting is mostly applied is ICT development. Within the framework of technological development, forecasting concerns the extrapolation of developments toward the future and the exploration of achievements that can be realized through technology in the long term ([39], p. 503). Visioning Visioning is the action of developing, or the process of intensely making images of, the desired future (plans, goals, objectives, outcomes, etc.) sufficiently real and compelling to act as a stimulus or spur to the present action. It also refers to the fact of seeing visions. As such, it can be carried out by an individual or a group of people. The importance of seeing visions of the future, which usually materialize subsequent to new scientific discovery and its technological applications, lies in that these visions have the power not only to catch people s minds and imaginations but also to inspire them into a quest for new possibilities and untapped opportunities and to challenge them to think outside common mindsets ([11], p. 3). Scenario planning Scenarios are about making stories about the future and usually have more specific detail than backcasting. They represent a series of events that we envision or imagine happening in the future. Visionary scenarios are part of everyday thinking in that it is filled with some ventures into the unknown or mysterious world of the future, tomorrow, next week, next year, or next decade. The more elaborate scenarios (e.g., a generation of simulation games for policymakers combining known facts about the future with key driving forces identified by considering environmental, economic, social, political, and technological trends) are usually developed by professional researchers (or groups of analysts) working for government agencies in relation to different domains or for organizations and institutions. For a detailed, descriptive account of the above approaches, which can be combined in futures studies, the interested reader can be directed to Bibri [12]. The backcasting approach, which is the focus of this paper, is addressed separately (and together with forecasting) in more details in the next section. Backcasting approach to strategic planning Historical origins and characteristic features The term backcasting was coined by Robinson [62] in the description of the policy analysis approach. The backcasting approach was originally developed in the 1970s as an alternative to traditional energy forecasting and planning and employed as a novel analytical tool for energy planning using normative scenarios. Backcasting studies concerned with energy dealt particularly with the so-called soft energy policy paths, characterized by the development of renewable energy technologies and a low-energy demand society [57]. At the time, such studies emerged as a response to regular energy forecasting, which was mainly based on trend extrapolation and projections of energy consumption, with a focus on large-scale fossil fuel and nuclear technologies. By developing an energy backcasting approach, the focus became analysis and deriving policy goals [62]. Around the 1990s, a few years after the inception of sustainable development, the emphasis on backcasting shifted towards the identification and exploration of sustainability solutions in Sweden [27], Canada [64], and the Netherlands [76]. Such solutions pertain to a wide range of topics, including transportation and mobility [8], sustainable technologies and sustainable system innovation [76], sustainable household [30, 55], transforming companies into sustainable ones [35], sustainable urban design [51], sustainable transportation systems [2, 32, 65], and sustainable city development [22]. In light of these endeavors, it has been corroborated that the distinctive characteristics of backcasting as a planning approach make it especially appropriate for sustainability applications (e.g., [27, 35, 36]). This has to do with the idea of taking a range of sustainable futures as a starting point for analyzing their feasibility and potential, as well as possible ways of attaining those futures (e.g., [56]). For a more detailed overview of the past and present applications of backcasting, the interested reader can be directed to Quist and Vergragt [57]. Backcasting is concerned with how desirable futures can be created and attained rather than what future states of affairs are likely to occur. In other words, backcasting is not concerned with predicting the future; rather, it is a strategic problem-solving framework, in the quest for the answer to how to reach specified outcomes in the future. This involves finding ways of linking goals that may lie more than a generation in the future to a set of steps performed now and designed to achieve that end. Therefore, backcasting is used in cases when it is desired to actively dictate a future outcome rather than merely predicting it. In backcasting, one envisions a